Baghdad's exclusive anthrax dealers in America and France

By Philip Shenon in WashingtonMarch 17 2003

Iraq has identified a biological supply house in the United States and a French scientific institute as the sources of all the foreign germ samples it used to create the biological weapons that are still believed to be in its arsenal, according to US officials and foreign diplomats who have reviewed Baghdad's latest weapons declaration to the United Nations.

The American Type Culture Collection, or ATCC, had previously been identified as a supplier of anthrax and other germ samples to Iraq. But the UN, which received Iraq's latest weapons declaration in December, has never made public the full extent of the sales by ATCC and the Pasteur Institute in Paris.

Nor was there any public suggestion before now that Iraq had depended exclusively on supplies from the US and France in the 1980s in the development of biological weapons.

The shipments were approved by the US Government in the 1980s, when the transfer of pathogens for research was legal and easily arranged.

A copy of the Iraqi declaration on biological weapons reveals the full variety of germs that Iraq says were obtained from abroad for its biological weapons program. ");document.write("

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Iraq has acknowledged that it used the US and French germ samples to produce weapons in the 1980s. It has repeatedly insisted that the program was shut down, and all of the biological material destroyed in the 1990s - an assertion the US and many other nations say is demonstrably untrue.

The US, France and other Western countries placed severe restrictions on the shipment of biological materials in the early 1990s, after the extent of Iraq's biological weapons program became clear in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf war.

Representatives of ATCC and the Pasteur Institute said they were not surprised that Iraq had identified them as suppliers of germ samples. They said all of their shipments had been legal and that they were made with the understanding that the agents would be used for research and medical purposes.

"ATCC could never have shipped these samples to Iraq without the Department of Commerce's approval for all requests," said Nancy Wysocki, of the ATCC, a non-profit organisation. "They were sent for legitimate research purposes."

Michele Mock, a microbiologist at the Pasteur Institute, said: "In the 1980s, the rules were entirely different. If there was an official letter, there was no reason to avoid providing this material."